Small, Irrelevant Dolphin Sites And Miserable Failures

We've all seen 'em.

Here's one that really sucks: http://houstonlively.com

I used to have 20 members, but I deleted half of them just because I could.  Should I keep this site online, or just kill myself?

Who else has a sorry ass Dolphin site?

I have several Dolphin sites. Not many members on any of them, but I lay the blame more on myself that the website.

My biggest issues is Marketing properly (an area Im not too good with obviously). You can build the best website in the world, but without the help of getting that name out there, whether its paid advertising or word of mouth, no one will even know.

http://www.efriendsrock.com

A whopping 3 members not including myself. I started this site 6 years ago. Originally i wrote my own script for this site which was a clone of myspace. Done because i got sick of myspaces lack of security in the forums. I had hundreds of members from myspace as members on that site.

That script was my first of a project that size. I made to many mistakes developing it, could not get it to run properly on shared hosting when i no longer could afford my dedicated, so rather than rewrite the script i decided to try something else.

I switched to dolphin and lost all my members. How is that for miserable.

I've had about 4 Dolphin sites fail completely... as in they aren't there any more.

I have two sites that were somewhat popular but I made the HUGE mistake of upgrading them from 6.X to 7.X ... after that they went from the top of Google to about page 3456536.

That's a nice template, where did you find it?

Here's mine: http:www.fowlnation.com

Hasn't failed yet, but #$@!% did I get tired of trying to keep it active. 

@houston - and everybody.   Almost everyone here has "sorry assed" sites.   Most seem to get stuck at around the 200 member level, but that is a generalization.  A few of mine are getting closer, but still nothing I would describe as having "traction".  

Having thought about this for a bit, I believe that the problem here is that most of us are developers, or if we are not, we have a "developer's mentality".  We think that if we just make our sites really awesome, and get rid of the many frustrating things that don't work properly here, then our sites will take off.   

I don't think this is the case.  I am currently taking an online class in "entrepreneurial technology" offered by Stanford University, and I realized there is much much more to a successful venture than many of us thought.   Do you have a "community manager" for any of your sites?   That is a pretty important role, almost as important as the developer.   Then of course there is "content management" - making sure there is always new stuff there - also marketing, operations, customer service, sales, and a dozen other "roles" that need to be filled.  Pretty tough for an individual. 

That is why I think an incubator of some kind of "online incubator" could be useful here.  I started to build one a while ago, and even got some great members here,  but dropped it - mostly because I didn't think the alerts were working properly for a small community like that.  If someone posted something on the forum, they had to go back and look to see if someone responded.  Also because some things came up in my personal life and I ended up dropping this project.   It could be revived if people are still interested.  The site it totally locked down, but some of you remember and can still log in at social-accelerator..com.   People were comfortable enough with it that they were using their real names and listing some of their adult site. 

If any one is interested, I can be very loose with administrative and even back end controls, and run it on a trust basis.    I can help, but I have other projects that also need my attention.   I also think we could benefit here from "work exchange agreements".  For example, "I will work on your site for two hours a week, if you work on mine for two hours a week".

Rob

Ive built at least 10 Dolphin sites, 

1 has been my 'main ongoing project' which has had 2 years of market research behind it, LOTS of live testing, beta launch and is now under final stage of proper launch - now have a marketing company working with me on this site and have had investors show very high interest.

While thats been in development, Ive launched 5 sites myself for clients each has had between 500-several thousand members, all have been niche and product orientated so its not been all about numbers but trying to drive users to purchase which has worked fairly well.

Also had 1 site for myself which was a re-launch of a website I used to run on a custom script. Never really took off since 2nd site build (first site was closed down due to split in company). Never managed to get all the old customer to re-register on new site... guess that could be called a flop!

Other than that, Ive built lots of development sites that are still 'idea' waiting to launch maybe one day...

The thing is marketing and time spent on promoting...

the sites that have done better, either high members, or members to purchasing customers, have always had lots of social networking promotion behind them.... I dont know if its possible to really promote a Dolphin site without relying on facebook, twitter etc to promote it!

Which means - your site HAS to offer something that FB and Twitter dont offer, either niche, function or product...

I Agree with Caltrade  its either you are a programmer or a business man. although you can try doing both but something is going to be lacking your attention .. 

as for my site its doing ok by my standard we have gone from being 7 million on alexa.com to 800,000.. last year this time we did a total of 2,000 visits compared to 20,000 this month.... we have about 600 real members and growing but recently we decided to focus more on visits, page view,and increasing the time spent on our site over membership... but im a one man show and im really starting to get tired wish i could find real partners who would work for stake in company ownership ...check us out   zipka.com  Urban media site 

heres one of the development sites I built a while ago, never did any promotion at all on this as it was  a 'tech demo' for a client (nightclub) and not a public site.

The idea was a nightlife/party type social site so has some good interactive fun areas including a chat roulette mod which works well when members are online!

Kept the URL and site as I think it has potential for maybe for an 18-30s club type site! 

Anyone think this has legs, or interested in it in anyway, let me know!

Im not into the club/party scene at all so its not been something Im naturally interested in promoting.

Would be interested if anyone is into clubbing big time and thinks they could help with promoting the site?...

 www.chatnova.com

i think this whole ordeal has been hammered previously. and caltrade the course you are taking is partially correct in some of what is being explained. there are several roles, and given a budget which in most of these cases of failed sites, you will find that the issue from the onset was the budget. A plan, do you have a plan, do you have short term goals, do you have long term goals? 

IT- i am not knocking any shared efforts, but can tell you that many people who start out on dolphin believe they are going to get hosting for $5.99/month and that is all there is to they IT. they have no skills or limited skills with with security | site managerment | server management | content management | community management. fact of the matter is many cannot even query google correctly to find the required information for any specific question. 

SEO | SEM, marketing strategies and marketing campaigns. None of this is free, and if you are of the mindset you are going to do this all on your own, and you are doing it on a penny budget, you should be prepared for failure. Now granted, there are some dolphin sites that are sucessful and pulling their own weight, and actually producing an income for the site owner. however, in some cases that is all that he is, is the site owner | manager. and has to depend on outsourced staff, or contract staff to provide what he requires, and most times he dont even know what he requires, to get him through to the next stage. 

what is sucessful when considering a site. that is not really defined either. are you doing the site as a hobby or an income or what is the purpose and scope of your site. have you researched your target audience, do you know the metrics of the trends that are relative to what you are going to provide on your website. 

some sites get lucky, and just hit it. and we are not limiting that to the dolphin application, i am talking across the board and for a period greater than 10 years, i have seen sites go up, i have seen sites go down. is there really any rhyme or reason for this behavior, i havent discovered that answer, but i study that goes on, and i watch with an open-mind about what is going on with the internet, and trends. Based on many trends, similar to the stock market, you can project, or forecast many different perspectives about overall scopes when considering building a website. 

Yes where it is virtual property, and really considered virtual real estate, you have to know where you are going, and you have to know what you are spending, you have to know your target audience. By walking into unknowns, you are only setting yourself up for failure. 

I have watched this go on, with post-nuke, phpnuke, e107, wordpress, concrete5, simplecms, phpbb, ipb, and many other applications and scripts. 

so what makes sites like pinterest or thinkup work and become productive? 

There are just many factors to consider when launching a website. Similarly when you consider launching or opening a physical business. You would not or at least should not just jump in with both feet without a plan. 

At any rate, this has become elongated and quite boring to read for many, but relative information for others. 

I wish all sites were successful and that all who launched an effort would prosper, but that is most likely not to be realized. 

So good luck to you all, and happy ventures. 

i promote my site anywhere and everywhere,, hell i even right the url on truck stop bathroom walls here in houston when im in there earning server money the HARD WAY!

Guys..... I would dearly love a "content manager" and a "community manager" and a "marketing / promotions manager" "and a "PR Manager" and an "employment manager" and an "SEO manager".... But I cant pay and the voulanteer sector is scarce of people witrh the correct skills required. I have known for a year or more that this is what my site Needs, and MUST have.

It is the single largest obsicle in the way of 99% of sites on here flourishing. people wont even work for a business percentage because 0% of 0 still = 0.  My artner and i have to handle all of the ablove tasks and maintain and build the site. It's not a completely lost cause, But I can see the 100 fold difference this would make.  I guess I am going to have to come up with a plan for this, but it is the way things HAVE to go.

I have a roadmap for exactly where I want my business to go, but without the staff to speed up the vehicle and smooth the road ahead its going to be a long bumpy road.

Incidentaly, if there are any voulanteers out ther.... you all know me, you all know my site and if you want to bring somthing to the party in the eventual hope of a big payday for everyone, you know where to message me : )